


Practical Economics

by dancinbutterfly



Series: Tried and Tested Series [10]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bottom Derek Hale, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s03e02 Chaos Rising, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Mpreg, Smart Scott
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 07:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1596449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>God forbid anything be easy, Scott thinks as he stares up at the Beacon Hills First National Bank’s brick exterior wall. His pregnant Alpha is on his right and Jackson, the guy who bullied him and Stiles starting from the first day they dared to pick up lacrosse sticks, is on his left.    Spoilers for S3E2 Chaos Rising</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practical Economics

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for all the support! S3! I am finding so much fun stuff to do in this season with Stiles, Derek, and the Puppy you guys dont even know. 
> 
> Spoilers for s3e2 Chaos Rising with the events of the episode moved backwards in time just under 1 month. Some dialogue is lifted and manipulated from the episode to make the story veer closer to canon.
> 
> Thanks to Valress for the emotional support and dairberner for the beta.

God forbid anything be easy, Scott thinks as he stares up at the Beacon Hills First National Bank’s brick exterior wall. His pregnant Alpha is on his right and Jackson, the guy who bullied him and Stiles starting from the first day they dared to pick up lacrosse sticks, is on his left. 

It will never stop being insane that his life now involves things like bank robbery. They’re supposed to lay siege to a building in a minute. A bank vault more specifically if the note were to be believed. Yeah they sent a note, seriously, proving that they might be an Alpha pack but they were in the same maturity category as freshmen who dealt in folded college ruled paper and sparkle gel pens. 

Lydia and Stiles are back at Chez Stilinski masterminding the whole thing. They got the plans. They’re playing Watchtower as Stiles would say. It makes Jackson and Derek nervous and Scott isn’t much better, them separated like this. At least Allison is in front of him with her crossbow. He wants to pull her behind him but he knows better than to give into that impulse. Just because he can heal doesn’t mean a hard punch to the face won’t hurt. 

“This is really necessary?” He asks. 

Jackson shoves him. “Dude.”

“I’m just saying.”

“If they’ve been chained up and denied access to outside contact, possibly moonlight for three months, then when they get it now they’ll be…” Derek sighs and drags a hand over his face. 

He looks so tired. Then again when doesn’t the poor guy look tired? When he’s with Stiles, his mind offers helpfully 

“They’ll be what?” Isaac pushes. Jackson is his first beta, technically he should have the right-hand rank but Isaac stands beside him instead. He’s earned it with hours of time and aching amounts of loyalty and feeling. 

“Imagine if you were chained up for three months. They could anything from catatonic to feral. I don’t know what a best case scenario is here. I just know we don’t want them in there one more minute than they have to be.”

“Feral. Joy.”

Isaac’s eyes flashed in the darkness. “You know what, Whittemore, if you don’t shut your mouth I’ll-“

“What, Freezer Boy?”

“Seriously just go straight to hell man. Express.”

“Okay wow.” Scott throws up his hands to silence them. “There are a lot of facts and feelings flying around right now and that’s great but you both need to stop.”

“You can both sit this out if you can’t handle it,” Derek agrees.

“You could’ve done something if you knew, Jackhole. Told someone.”

“You think those first three visits from social worker were called in from space aliens?”

“Oh.”

Silence crashes over the group. Wow, awkward just like it always is to find out that Jackson really is a good man deep down. He called the DCFS on Coach Lahey before, probably in middle school. That impresses Scott more than all this wolf stuff ever could after some of the stories his mom’s told him from the ER. He stands a little closer to Jackson as they approach the bank and thinks maybe lab partnering with him in the future won’t be the worst thing on earth.

It reminds him of school and that causes an itch in his brain that freezes him in his tracks. Derek notices first and glares at him. “What?”

“There’s just something I can’t get out of my head.” All the summer school homework has permeated his brain when he’s not helping Stiles pick out baby things via online shopping and getting to know Allison again.

“Well?” Jackson demands.

“Risk and reward.”

“Scott,” Derek growls. “We don’t have time for econ class right now. Just tell us.

“We don’t know enough to about the situation to measure the risk for what we’re doing. We don’t know enough.”

“We know they gave us this time to get them out and time is running out.” The growl has an edge of panic in it that makes Scott’s own skin crawl.

“But think about it, they put the symbol in your door three months ago. What have they been waiting for? Why wait until now?”

“Obvious answer is obvious,” Jackson coughs, pounding on his chest as if to prove the point. Isaac snaps his teeth and Scott doesn’t hold back the flash of his own eyes. 

He doesn’t think the wait has anything to do with the pregnancy. Deucalion had seemed so surprised by that turn of events. The issue just had to be from something else. They were just missing it. 

Allison says nothing. She’s disappeared. It’s her superhero thing. She’s not even there for him to get a hard-on over but it’s so sexy, god, he could explode over her.

Derek folds his arms over his chest and shakes his head. “Obvious or not it doesn’t matter.”

“But what if this thing, this one thing, is the thing that matters?”

“Then we do nothing and my pack dies,” Derek says quiet and final. “I know what I’m risking going in there - my life for theirs. The reward is getting them home.” He’s already moved to the fire escape ladder and started to pull himself up. “I’ll understand if anyone wants to stay out of it.”

To his surprise Jackson is the next one up the ladder then Isaac after him. Scott curses at the ground then up at the sky where the full moon is rising, then in Derek’s general direction for being so fucking selfish when his life for theirs included the Puppy too. Stiles wouldn’t recover from that which means right now Scott’s job is to protect Derek from any and all gut shots and get him home in one piece. He sighs heavily when he hoists himself up the ladder as though with an effort he no longer needs. 

He smells the Alphas when they bust in and…Ms Morrell. It’s unsettling, because he can’t tell if it’s old or new but they need to get to their pack and don’t have time to really investigate. They should’ve come earlier, or done this. 

They find their pack, predictably, in the vault. Three snarling wolves now that the moon could shine in. Boyd and Erica are beautiful in their ferocity as they bound out, growling and snapping. Scott wonders when he started thinking that way about things and people.

There is a third wolf in there, with long dark hair and thick fur. She pauses on her away out when Derek catches her arm, and chokes out “Cora?” Broken is the only word for how he sounds when he says her name. “Cora?”

“Derek. Get out. Get out now.” She inhales deep, just like the Alphas had. Oh. “For your cub, fucking run.” Yeah.

Who the hell is that? Jackson demands.

“She’s my sister, my younger sister,” Derek pants against tears. 

Scottt can smell the saline, taste it in the air. He licks his lips absently at the salt sensation. “How did she get here?” he asks. 

“Like I have a clue? I thought she was dead!”

Jackson growls and then twists his own arm. The sound of bones cracking was not like the cavitation of popping knuckles in the least. Knuckle cracking didn’t make Scott want to pull his skin off.

“Clearly you were wrong.”

“Thanks. You’re very helpful,” Isaac snaps, probably because Derek isn’t up for it. 

There’s a roar from Erica that’s almost Alpha in depth and power. She’s fury and thunder and ravenous, homicidal waves. Cora and Boyd echo her as rage and hunger shakes the vault in the same moment Scott can feel an ash circle snap shut around them.

The sound of their howling gets louder until Scott suddenly knows, knows, they’re going to die in here. He’s more panicked than he thought he’d be and sadder than he is angry which is surprising too. They’re going to get ripped into pieces and Scott’s mostly sad and shocked this is happening to all of them, especially the Puppy. 

Then Boyd hits him in the face and he thinks “especially me” and wants his mom and Allison to ice his eye socket. Scott has just enough spare focus for Boyd’s arm as it reaches away from him to grab Isaac for a ménage-a-vicious-beating. Scott can’t see Jackson and Erica launch themselves at each other but he can hear it. He can hear Derek trying to talk to his sister as well.

God he’s really glad that Allison isn’t here. It means she’s probably outside the circle and will get out for help perfectly fine. The image helps him fight harder.

Derek manages to twist himself out of Boyd’s grip when the teenager’s feral focus shifts to Isaac for seconds too long. When he’s free Scott leaves Isaac despite of guilt and rushes to Derek. Seriously, if he lets Stiles’s baby’s baby momma get killed before the baby is even born Stiles will totally do something like take back his godfather rights. Yeah. That’s why.

He finds Derek with Erica instead of his sister which is not a good thing; Erica really is something else. She’s never been really scary before but she is now like that Alpha Kali had been. Hot scary. Powerful scary. Scott doesn’t know what that power is and doesn’t care as she swipes out with her claws at Derek’s bump. 

Her howl is distinctly feminine, not only in the sound of her voice but as though the tune makes it clear that it is only meant to be performed by women. The wolf-mother stuff is clearly uglier and more complex than any lion mating on Discovery Channel. He tries not think about female breeding competitors in birds or whatever for his bio class as he pulls Erica off a bleeding Derek. 

As he hauls her off, Erica reaches back and claws through the side of his face. Her razor nails cut through the bone of his lower jaw making his cheek sag and his screaming start. He holds his jaw as still as he can as he chokes down his shouts through the healing pain. His knees give out at the sensory overload of superpowered agony and Erica turns back to Derek, giving Scott a few seconds to breathe through the dripping blood, pain searing, mess of his face. 

He blinks through the blurs and sees his personal Artemis not ten feet away, holding her bow, crouched at the ash line. Oh yeah, he’s been studying the Greek pantheon for the world history class he failed last year and she is totally his hunter goddess of awesome win. That said he thinks she could pull off an Athena too if she wanted. Bottom line, he wants to crawl to his knees and worship at her feet in gratitude for her mere presence.

“Allison.” Hissing makes him cry at the pain in his jaw but he only has to do it once for her to hear him. 

“Scott? Oh my god, are you okay? Morrell was here. She told me to hide. I think she was the one who made the ash circle. What is being trapped in here?”

“Circle,” Scott grits out. “You have to open it.”

“Why? Scott, if you won’t tell me-“

“Just trust me.”

She gives him a long look then moves back to the ash. Derek’s shout at her to stop happens at the same time her hands touch the dust. Fuck, he really loves her because she opens the circle, no questions asked. 

Yes, Boyd, Erica and Cora are heading off to less familiar human targets, but still. It buys them valuable time. That’s what he’s going to say to Derek after he gets him to stop yelling at Allison over letting the pack out. 

“Erica nearly disemboweled you,” comes out instead, crushing said plans of persuasion, surprising but needed. Everyone is quiet and Scott charges on with his foot knowingly shoved down his throat. “It was some weird Animal Planet competing females thing but if she’d managed it, your baby would be dead organs on this fucking floor.”

“You need to spend less time with Stillinski,” Jackson says with a shiver. “He’s making you just as creepy as he is.”

“Scott.” He feels Allison’s hand warm and strong on his arm. It’s a stop sign he blows right through.

“No. Stiles is my friend first, Derek, and if you got the Puppy killed, I’d have to live with that forever - knowing I could’ve saved my best friend’s kid’s life so, yeah. Sorry, not sorry.”

“And now they’re out there, rabid, three bombs ready to explode on the first human flesh they meet,” Derek says, choked off in the back of his palette. “I was aware of my body, Scott.” He stands up straighter and the bump is clearly visible. “I was protecting my cub and fighting but it doesn’t matter. None of it because I’m still the Alpha to their betas. I have to take care of them. My sister. My sister who’s alive. I have to stop them before they hurt someone or themselves, Puppy or no Puppy. If you can’t deal with that,” Derek wipes blood off his hands on his torn shirt, just above where the bump began, and glared at Scott, “feel free to fuck off back home.”

“You can’t do that to-”

“If the next words out of your mouth involve Stiles I’ll break something important Scott, something that will hurt to heal.”

Scott feels flung back in time, like it’s a year ago and Derek is someone to fear, someone to dislike. There isn’t a single skip in his heartbeat though. So okay. This is happening.

“We need a plan I guess then.”

Allison raises her hand. “I think I can help with that.”


End file.
